PASS Summit MVP Guest Series: Inspiration for the Year Ahead

Each day “passes”, and it’s closer and closer we get to PASS Summit 2012. To build anticipation for this most inspiring event, we have yet another guest blog post from Jason Strate, an esteemed member of our SQL Server MVP community, to fill you in on what you can look forward to the most from PASS Summit 2012!

FEATURED MVP: JASON STRATE

Jason Strate is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for SQL Server and database architect with Pragmatic Works. With more than fifteen years of experience, he actively blogs and presents on SQL Server and related technologies.

It’s about time for the annual migration of SQL Server professionals to the PASS Summit. In just a little over a week, more than 4,000 of us will descend on Seattle to participate in the largest SQL Server community event in the world.

The PASS Summit means so many things to so many people, but for a lot of us, it is seen as a learning event. There are more than 180 sessions to choose from, which feature SQL Server experts from around the world. For others, the event is mainly about networking, which provides the opportunity to make the ever-important connections that help advance our careers. It is also the chance to meet the expert, or reconnect with friends that they haven’t seen in maybe a year. For others still, they are there to see the cool, new applications, hardware, or services that the sponsors have brought for people to check out.

These are all great things to look forward to at PASS Summit, but they aren’t the thing I am most looking forward to. Each year there are two important things that I get out of the PASS Summit. The first is the opportunity to help define what I don’t know. There will be sessions with solutions that never occurred to me – seeing those implementations of the same technology that I use from day to day helps to inspire my own ideas on what I am able to do with SQL Server. The second thing I look forward to is almost a result of the first item. By the time PASS Summit comes to a close, I’ll be chock full of enough new ideas and inspiration to last a year.

The PASS Summit is the time to meet with friends, draw inspiration, and get recharged. Every year, when I am at the airport heading home, like everyone else, I sit and write all of the ideas, thoughts and plans that a week in Seattle has filled me with. I know I’m not alone in this feeling. Often when I talk to people after the Summit, they mention this same inspiration. They talk about how they see that they are a part of a community of professionals that they can be a part of and contribute to. It’s this feeling of excitement for the oncoming year, that I’m looking forward to the most from PASS Summit 2012.